We’ve always had a fondness for the Inhumans as characters and concepts despite the lackluster treatment they often receive in print. The Inhumans first appeared as supporting characters in the Fantastic Four when creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby still masterminded that title together. In 1970, Kirby launched Inhumans on their own adventures in Marvel’s second attempt at an Amazing Adventures title.

Beginning with a new #1 issue – something that seems a monthly event at Marvel these days – the 1970 Amazing Adventures put both the Inhumans and the Black Widow on the cover. The Black Widow stories have some wonderful John Buscema and Gene Colan artwork you can preview at Diversions of the Groovy Kind.

Even the Mandarin appears in these Amazing Adventures, in his utterly ridiculous “Asian Villain” outfit! The Inhumans made it about 16 issues in this format, with Roy Thomas and Neal Adams stepping up to create new stories after Kirby left. But like Thomas & Adams’ X-men, the Inhumans were doomed as a publication.

Okay. Not exactly doomed. They got their own title after that! Leaving behind the anthology comic format, the Inhumans had earned their own shot as title characters. Doug Moench and George Perez launched them with Inhumans #1 in 1975. We have that first issue in our archives, too: Spawn of Alien Heat!

That series showed a lot of potential, but its struggle to find its feet is almost palpable. You can find it reprinted in a hardcover format as Marvel Masterworks: Inhumans #2 from 2010, the first volume of which covers all those Amazing Adventures stories plus their origin story from Thor.

Marvel billed the Inhumans as “uncanny” in this series, a word they would later apply to the X-men. The “Uncanny X-men” stuck, and few readers of bronze-age Marvel recall anyone but the X-men ever being uncanny! Gil Kane moved from cover art to interior art in this series. Although his style seems rough after Perez’s smooth work, Kane delivers some truly classic 70s work in stories like “A Trip to the Doom” in issue #7.

In what now feels like a desperate ploy to boost sales, the Inhumans fight Hulk in their final issue. The same thing happened to Kirby’s Eternals in the mid-70s. Bad sales figures? Hulk Smash! “Let Fall the Final Fury” turns out to be the last appearance of the Inhumans in their own title for about 25 years.

Despite some great guest appearances in John Byrne’s Fantastic Four in the 1980s, the Inhumans never really got a stellar treatment until Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee crafted a twelve-issue limited series for them in the 21st century. We have some of that artwork in our archives. The Inhumans live up to their potential in this compelling story, despite its reliance on the same old struggle with Maximus the Mad.

The four-issue Inhumans series by Carlos Pacheco earlier that summer had some stunning art by Ladronn. It attempted to free the Inhumans from the only two stories they ever seemed to get: the fight with Black Bolt’s mad brother, and their thing about needing to live on the moon. Pacheco stepped in and said, “Let’s shake this up a bit,” taking their conceptual struggles in the next logical plot direction.

But, in the wake of the Jenkins/Lee story, Marvel decided on a “next generation” approach to the Inhumans. The book became more teen-friendly and introduced a new, younger set of Inhumans characters, some of whom we met in Jenkin’s story. This 2003 Inhumans series ran for twelve issues. It has its merits and perhaps competed at the time with Marvel’s Runaways and Exiles for a teen audience wanting teen characters. Of those three, only Runaways kept our attention, proving to be a book about teens that older audiences could appreciate, too.

And that, dear Martians, is why some lucky buyer overseas ended up with a stack of Inhumans comics from us! We collected those first Kirby issues, the run of their 1970s title, and the Jenkins/Lee paperback, along with some other minor Inhumans goodies from over the years. It was fun to have them all close at hand for a few years, and we did hold on to our single-issue copies of the Jenkins stories.

As we liquidate our physical comic book collection to help pay for our Masters degree, you can support the Martian resistance by shopping in our eBay store. A special thank you goes out to our readers who have helped spread the word about our sales through Twitter!

In the second Amazing Adventures series, Jack Kirby took The Inhumans out of the Fantastic Four to star in their own stories.

Here in 1970, Kirby’s art moves towards the revolutionary cosmic style that defined his later 1970s works. Plus, he takes writing credit for these Inhumans tales. Most of them stay pretty close to well-worn Marvel scenarios: good guys manipulated by bad guys into fighting other good guys, or good guys punching evil costumed creeps. But, you can look at them as a warm-up for Kirby’s rise to greater creative control over art and story.

Kirby crafted the Inhumans stories in the first four issues of Amazing Adventures before other artists and writers took over. We see them as a middle ground between Kirby’s Fantastic Four work and the cosmic epics he would soon produce at the apex of his career.

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Jack Kirby created numerous monster stories for anthology titles at Marvel Comics. Jack Kirby’s monsters raged through the pages of Amazing Adventures, Tales to Astonish, and Strange Tales in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Many of them came back to life in Marvel reprint anthologies like Where Monsters Dwell in the early 1970s. We have a few of these gems in our collection, so get ready to rock! Here come the monsters!

Like this:

Jack Kirby created numerous monster stories for anthology titles at Marvel Comics. Jack Kirby’s monsters raged through the pages of Amazing Adventures, Tales to Astonish, and Strange Tales in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Many of them came back to life in Marvel reprint anthologies like Where Monsters Dwell in the early 1970s. We have a few of these gems in our collection, so get ready to rock! Here come the monsters!

Jack Kirby created numerous monster stories for anthology titles at Marvel Comics. Jack Kirby’s monsters raged through the pages of Amazing Adventures, Tales to Astonish, and Strange Tales in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Many of them came back to life in Marvel reprint anthologies like Where Monsters Dwell in the early 1970s. We have a few of these gems in our collection, so get ready to rock! Here come the monsters!

Jack Kirby created numerous monster stories for anthology titles at Marvel Comics. Jack Kirby’s monsters raged through the pages of Amazing Adventures, Tales to Astonish, and Strange Tales in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Many of them came back to life in Marvel reprint anthologies like Where Monsters Dwell in the early 1970s. We have a few of these gems in our collection, so get ready to rock! Here come the monsters!

Like this:

Jack Kirby created numerous monster stories for anthology titles at Marvel Comics. Jack Kirby’s monsters raged through the pages of Amazing Adventures, Tales to Astonish, and Strange Tales in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Many of them came back to life in Marvel reprint anthologies like Where Monsters Dwell in the early 1970s. We have a few of these gems in our collection, so get ready to rock! Here come the monsters!

Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko rock stories of the far-out, freaky, and fantastic in the first issue of Amazing Adventures! We’ve got the 2-part “Torr,” “Midnight at the Wax Museum,” and the first appearance and origin of “Dr. Droom!”